By Katherine Bethany – President, SAVE International
Much has happened this last month. So let me get right to it…
S. Government Changes Value Engineering Reporting Requirement for Federal Agencies: The United States Government’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published a revision to the A-131 Value Engineering requirements for Agencies of the U.S. Government. The change removes the requirement for upward reporting on any value engineering activities done by the agencies. They accepted public comment on this change, but only for 30 days so comments must be in by April 5, 2018.
SAVE International does not support this change as no reporting means no accountability or requirement. This could very well mean the end of U.S. Federal Government Value Engineering Programs. Given the short turnaround, SAVE International sent a special email to our United States members asking that they provide comment on the action.
Thank you to all who took the action and made comments – hopefully this will help to change the mind of OMB. If you didn’t see the email and want to review the specific language, the link to this action is:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/03/06/2018-04445/value-engineering-ve
In addition to making a formal comment, it would be helpful to use your voice (Americans only in this case) to strongly recommend to your specific Congressional Representatives that they ask OMB to not eliminate the reporting requirement.
Value Summit Sponsorship Opportunities: The SAVE International 2018 Value Summit is fast approaching and we need your help to make this a really successful event. Please consider sponsoring the Value Summit or asking companies you work with on Value Engineering Studies to sponsor the event. It is much more effective if the personal contact is used to request the sponsorship.
So I am asking you to make the effort to contact one or two firms to see if they would consider spending a little to support this key educational opportunity. To see what sponsorship opportunities are available, please view the SAVE Sponsorship & Advertising Program.
Elections: This month you will receive at least one email asking for you to vote for our new SAVE International Board members. You might remember I talked about how we are trying to clarify, and change a bit, the roles and responsibilities of the various Society entities (the SAVE International Board of Directors, Certification Board, etc.). One of the big changes we have been working on is consolidating our governing documents and tweaking our Board of Director positions so that they are more in line with industry standards.
Another big change is changing the titles of our Board members; specifically changing the titles from individual Vice Presidents (for things like marketing, membership, communication, education, etc.) and instead electing generic directors to our “Board of Directors”. One of the big benefits of this change is that it will allow each future Board to decide which Director will take on which role. The procedural issue is that we must have a membership vote on the constitutional changes before we can change the titles of the Board of Directors. So, we will ask you to vote on the Vice Presidents for now with the understanding that we will likely change that structure/titles next year.
Finally, please go online and register for our upcoming 2018 Value Summit. I look forward to seeing all of you there!
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